Many hands make Rushville trail take shape

Tuesday

In fact, all the community support helped organizers get a hefty state grant to rehabilitate the Robert Moody Trail.

A design firm, college students, Boy Scouts, local governments and nonprofits all had a hand in turning an old railroad bed running from the village of Rushville to Blodgett Road into a walking trail.

Residents who want to check out the 1.1-mile Robert Moody Trail from the village should use the entrance on the east side of Rushville Cemetery to avoid three bridges that have yet to be repaired.

Bridge repair and other work will cost $77,100, not including in-kind contributions from the town of Gorham and volunteer labor. The cash will come from the following sources:

• $50,000 from the state Environmental Protection Fund

• $15,000 from the town of Gorham coffers

• $5,000 from the village of Rushville coffers

• $5,000 from the Rails to Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit that supports turning railroad beds into walking trails

• $1,500 from the Canandaigua Lake Watershed Council

• $600 from Healthy Trails, Healthy People.

“Most of the grant money will go toward making the bridges safer,” said Rushville Mayor Skip Gorton.

To pull together funding, project organizers got help from Parks and Trails New York, a nonprofit organization. Fran Gotcsik, Parks and Trails New York director of programs and policy, said the Robert Moody Trail was a strong candidate for grants due to the strong community support for the project.

To start, the land was donated by the Moody family. Clark Patterson Associates, an architectural and engineering firm with an office in Rochester, prepared a free engineering study of the three dilapidated bridges. The project will be put out to bid this winter, and the work done next year, according to Gorham Supervisor Richard Calabrese.

Students in Finger Lakes Community College conservation professor Kevin Olvany’s environmental planning course drafted a plan to clear the trail and did work themselves. Gorham town workers have pitched in and will continue to do so.

Eagle Scout Alex Rector of Main Street in Rushville got his Eagle status by leading other Boy Scouts in construction of a kiosk for the Rushville trail head.

“I used to hike the trail when I was growing up, and I wanted to afford other people in the community the same experience,” Rector said.

The kiosk took more than a year to build, and it had to be completed before Rector turned 18. As a Scout, he wasn’t allowed to use power tools at his age, so his Scoutmaster and his father, Darrell Rector, did that work.

A $600 grant from the Healthy Trails, Healthy People will pay for a second kiosk on the Blodgett Road trailhead.

“It’s one of those cool projects that you want to see happen,” Olvany said.
For more information about the Robert Moody Trail, or New York’s Healthy Trails, Healthy People program, contact Parks and Trails New York at (518) 434-1583 or at www.ptny.org.